


Water Your Plants to Make Them Grow

by Debate



Series: Our Love is a Forest [1]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Flirting, Forgiveness, Late Night Conversations, On a boat!, Post-Episode: s03e01 Wanheda Part 1, or as much forgiveness as murphy can manage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-14
Updated: 2018-04-14
Packaged: 2019-04-22 21:35:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14317638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Debate/pseuds/Debate
Summary: He kinda wants to trust Emori. Not that he does, but he figures that if he expects to be betrayed then placing a little bit of trust in her isn’t the worse thing.[Post Wandheda 1, Murphy sticks around Emori, mostly for the hell of it, but maybe also because he doesn't want to sleep and Emori laughs at his jokes.]





	Water Your Plants to Make Them Grow

He leaves Jaha behind to talk to himself and walks up the dock, hands in his pockets, as casually as he can manage. 

“Who’d you steal the boat from, Emori?” he taunts as Emori climbs down from the upper deck. She laughs, the sound coming from deep in her throat, and he wants to be mad that she isn’t showing even a hint of guilt, but he isn’t really. Whatever. Sometimes being angry about everything requires too much energy. 

He steps onto the boat carefully. The knotwork keeping it tied to the dock doesn’t look particularly trustworthy, and the last thing he wants to do is make an ass of himself and fall on his face. Not that he didn’t do the exact same thing in front of Jaha today, but he’d rather not have a repeat performance; he still has his pride. 

Emori’s brother, whose name he can’t remember—can’t even remember if he learned—is helping Jaha’s new friend load boxes and packs onto the boat while Emori leans against the ladder to the upper deck doing what he can only call supervising. And he can get behind loafing around while the others do all the hard labor, so he leans next to her. 

“So, how’ve you been?” she asks, more teasing than conversational. He has half a mind to tell her to fuck off, but he shrugs instead. 

“Shitty.” 

She smiles, and maybe if the sun was out he’d be able to tell if it was regretful or not. 

“Well, it nice to see you alive,” she says, eyes tracking one of the boxes in her brother’s hands. 

“No thanks to you,” he huffs because he might not hate her but that doesn’t mean he can’t hold a grudge. “I thought the land mines were bad, but the sea monster was a nice fucking touch.” He doesn’t mention the bunker, that was all Jaha.

“No need to worry about that now,” she says, still refusing to be apologetic, “our boat’s too fast for him.” She pats the side of the boat and he nods, pretends that her reassurance isn’t as much of a relief as it is.

“We’re all set,” Emori’s brother calls as he sets a funky looking backpack down gingerly. Emori nods and climbs the steps to the upper deck and starts the motor. Jaha takes a position at the bow, doing his weird kneeling thing that looks monstrously uncomfortable; as the boat jolts forward, Murphy kinda hopes that he falls over and into the water. 

“I’m driving Otan,” Emori calls, so that’s her brother’s name, “Get some sleep if you want.” 

Otan ignores the suggestion and brushes past Murphy to climb onto the upper deck, clipping their shoulders. Murphy doesn’t take any particular offense, he’d be pissed off about being Jaha’s chauffeur too. 

He follows Otan up onto the upper deck, even though it’s cramped, mostly because he doesn’t want to be stuck with Jaha’s tall henchman, who doesn’t quite look like a riveting conversationalist. Emori at least was nice to talk to. And he kinda desperately wants to be around real, nonvideo-recorded people who aren’t Jaha. 

The breeze, at this higher level, is pleasant too, now that the boat’s chugging along. He’d missed it in the bunker. Fresh air. 

Otan shoots him another dirty look, probably for interrupting whatever conspiring he was planning on doing with Emori. But Murphy doesn’t care; if they’re planning on screwing them over again, he’d rather know about it now, get in on it. 

“So what’s the plan this time?” he says, interrupting a weird silent sibling conversation, “I don’t have anything for you to steal but this jacket, but I guess all that stuff Jaha’s having you cart around appeals to you.” 

“It’s a nice jacket,” Emori says, leans a little closer like she’s inspecting it, “But you can keep it, we’re just the transportation.” 

“Sure,” he says, then has to look away quickly, because it didn’t sound nearly as sarcastic as he meant it to. 

Otan says something to Emori that he doesn’t hear because of the scarf that hangs over most of his face. He doesn’t know why he bothers; Jaha’s goon’s face is wacked out too, and he has it on full display. Then again, Murphy has ten regular fingers and toes and the shape of his face is pretty generic, so he probably doesn’t get an opinion. But if he did he’d say that Otan’s face wouldn’t bother him, tell Emori that he’d be cool with her taking off her glove. Mostly because he wants to see her hand again, he’s almost completely forgotten what it looks like. 

Otan and Emori are talking softly now, and he purposely doesn’t pay attention this time. Even if they are planning to steal all this shit from Jaha, that’s not his problem anymore; hell, he’d probably get a good laugh out of it. 

Plus, he kinda wants to trust Emori. Not that he does, but he figures that if he expects to be betrayed then placing a little bit of trust in her isn’t the worse thing. 

“Keep, us on track,” Otan says, which he can’t help but overhear. Then he promptly returns to the lower deck, presumably to get some sleep like Emori had originally suggested. 

“You know, you should get some sleep too,” Emori says, turning her back to the controls to face him. “Don’t worry, you won’t miss much.” 

“I slept late this morning,” he says, as lightly as he can manage, but Emori shoots him a look that says she heard some of the bitterness in his tone. He shrugs. “I’ll keep you company for awhile longer.” 

She turns back to the controls. 

“Why?” she asks, curious, with the same tone of voice she’d used to crack him open in the desert.

He almost says because he has nothing better to do, but that’s crueler then he wants to be at the moment, and isn’t true anyway. 

“Still one of the only people in the world who doesn’t hate me,” he says instead. She turns around to face him again, so fast that her long hair whips around her shoulders. She looks confused. “Unless I’m totally reading you wrong,” he adds. 

She smiles again, and it should really be a crime, how soft her face looks when she opens herself just a little bit. He’d noticed it in the desert too. 

“No,” she confirms, with an odd little half tilt of her head, “I don’t hate you.” She pauses, weighing her words. “And you’re not as angry as I thought you’d be.” 

“Maybe I’m mellowing out,” he says and Emori laughs lightly, like she somehow knows him well enough to know that he’s constantly bristling on the inside. It’s weird, people are always more annoyed than amused by him, and they never try to understand him. “I get it,” he says more seriously, “You’ve got to survive, it was nothing personal.” The word _bygones_ almost slips off his tongue before he swallows it, because he’s being sincere right now, and that’s a word for deception. She doesn’t hate him, and he’s determined not to screw that up. 

And he seems to have succeeded somewhat, because she looks almost pleased by what he has to say. She doesn’t hate him and something about him makes her happy, sometimes. He really hopes that’s enough for her to want to keep him around. 

He moves to stand next to her, so they’re shoulder to shoulder. There really isn’t much to see at night, just like she’d said, but the inky blackness of the water and the sky are probably better than whatever is in his subconscious that would greet him if he went to sleep, so he plans to stay up a little later. He leans forward, to feel more of the refreshing wind. 

“He won’t miss it,” Emori says suddenly, and when he turns to face her he notices that she’s watching him closely. 

“What?” he asks, planting himself more firmly within the boat. 

“The man I stole the boat from,” she clarifies, then pauses. “You asked.” 

He nods because he did ask, but not seriously. 

“Well, the man we stole the boat from thought he got the better part of the deal, because he was too dumb to make it run, and too dumb to check that the bags of grain we gave weren’t filled with sand. I’m the one who put the light on it, and figure out to use the sun to make it run.” Pride colors her voice as she tells him the story, and he can’t help but think that it’s well deserved, he, a sky person, wouldn’t have been able to do that. “So it’s my boat,” she adds strongly, like she’s expecting a challenge, “mine.” 

“Clearly,” he says, “I wasn’t going to fight you for it.”

“You wouldn’t have been able to win anyway,” she replies, and he’s inclined to believe her. “I just thought you’d want to know, the boat’s mine, fair and square.” 

“Fair and square,” he repeats, and he gets that, the desire to own something when nothing’s been yours all your life. Thinks of the stupid knife he’d made, and how much it had screwed him over, and misses it a little. He supposes Emori wants him to know that’s there’s at least a little honesty in her. 

The story could be a farce, of course, but he decides he’ll buy into her honesty. Not really a survivor’s move, but one that stops the bristling under his skin for a little bit. Emori smiles, seemingly happy that he understands her, and he smiles in return, only vaguely recognising that he’s so, so fucked.


End file.
